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Impact of organizational inertia on organizational agility: the role of IT ambidexterity

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Abstract

Firms have increasingly relied on information technology (IT) to remain agile in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. Drawing on the organizational inertia theory and literature on IT-enabled agile, this study examines the relationship between organizational inertia, IT ambidexterity (i.e., IT exploration and exploitation), and organizational agility. Quantitative data were collected from 326 respondents through a questionnaire survey in China and analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling. Results show that organizational agility is negatively influenced by organizational inertia, whereas IT exploration and exploitation positively related to organizational agility and IT exploitation is the dominant force. Furthermore, IT exploration and exploitation partially mediate the relationship between organizational inertia and agility. These findings offer new theoretical perspectives on organizational agility and guide practitioners to deal with related inertia issues to effectively improve organizational agility.

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Funding

Funding was provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (CN) (Grant Nos. 71602014. 71914021), Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing, China (CN) (Grant Nos. cstc2020jcyj-msxmX0820).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management Science and Engineering, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, 400067, China

    Jie Zhen, Cejun Cao & Hanguang Qiu

  2. Financial Certification Authority, Beijing, 100054, China

    Zongxiao Xie

Authors
  1. Jie Zhen
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  2. Cejun Cao
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  3. Hanguang Qiu
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  4. Zongxiao Xie
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Correspondence to Cejun Cao.

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Appendix: Survey items

Appendix: Survey items

Constructs

Items

Supporting literature

Organizational inertia

Facing economic shifts and market changes, we are reluctant to change our current business model

Gibert (2005), and Liang et al. (2017)

Facing economic shifts and market changes, we are reluctant to change our investment patterns

Facing economic shifts and market changes, we are not able to change our current investment patterns

Facing economic shifts and market changes, we are not able to change our current business model

Facing economic shifts and market changes, we are not able to seek new development directions

IT exploration

We can quickly acquire new IT resources (e.g., new IT architecture, potential IT applications, and critical IT skills)

Lee et al. (2015), and Nwankpa and Datta (2017)

We can quickly add new functionality to IT management

We can easily experiment with new IT management practices

We invest widely in digital technology-enabled initiatives in IT management

IT exploitation

We make extensive use of the existing IT components, such as hardware, software, and network resources

Nwankpa and Datta (2017), and Lee et al. (2015)

We offer IT applications and services sufficiently

We have a high level of IT-related skills

Organizational agility

We fulfill demands for rapid-response, special requests of our customers when such demands arise

Lu and Ramamurthy (2011), Liang et al. (2017), and Ravichandran (2018)

We can quickly scale up or scale down our production/service levels to support fluctuations in demand from the market

We are quick to make appropriate decisions in the face of market changes

We look for ways to reinvent/reengineer our firm to better serve the market

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Zhen, J., Cao, C., Qiu, H. et al. Impact of organizational inertia on organizational agility: the role of IT ambidexterity. Inf Technol Manag 22, 53–65 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-021-00324-w

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